You mean all the anti-cheat options are pre-built into your rig?

Yes, so you don’t have to run a rootkit on a machine that you might file your taxes on.

So you own one machine and Rockstar owns the other?

Well that was supposed to be the deal with the PlayStation, too.

"Your computer calls me root too"

There's nothing "just" about compromising one of my machines so badly that I don't trust it to file my taxes on any more.

Yes. It's kind of an odd situation, because it's one where it's a benefit to me if other people are running anti-cheat. A limited sort of remote attestation that the people you're playing with aren't running certain kinds of software that peeks into or alters the memory image of the game or its graphics drivers.

Which is fine on a device that you only use for gaming, or am I missing something?

Well, you run untrusted code in your local network.

Then again, we all trust our "smart" devices even if we really don't.

I suppose a separate network would be the safe option (if you trust your router).

That said, have there been rotten meat attacks using "temporarily above temperature" fridges?

Are vegans just applying a defensive strategy against those?

Not nearly every "gaming PC" is used for only that.

When I grew up, I had one PC to do everything: Homework, gaming, learning to program, storing the single copy of treasured family photos, gaining painful experience in why to make backups before modifying the MBR to dual-boot Linux...

Especially with iPads and Chromebooks becoming more prevalent in an education context, a "gaming PC" might well be the only computer that gives the user full control over it that many children have access to these days.

I get where both sides are coming from.

On the one hand, buying a console and a reasonably spec'd laptop is clearly the better value. I did this during college, and both my laptop, and my console both lasted about a decade without requiring any upgrades. I did this again with the PS4. You wind up spending far less than you otherwise would trying to keep a gaming pc reasonably up to date, and both devices are optimized for their usage.

On the other hand? At some point most of us will realize that we've been successful enough that we don't have to optimize for value, and we can choose 'all of the above'. I now have a PS5 AND a stupidly overspec'd AI / gaming desktop. I've enjoyed having both.

Computers were much more expensive back in the days and would be obsolete much faster.

Nowadays for 50€ you can have a decent second hand computer with an older gen core i5 and 8 to 16GB of memory. That is plenty enough to run qubesOS.

You’ve just got Sony watching over you and transcribing your audio conversations with friends.

“Shoot that guy” “Ok”

Super valuable stuff.

Or more likely, listening to background noise to spy on what family members are saying and listening for marketing/brand trigger words. It may not be very human audible but if it's machine audible it will probably be scraped.

Training data for AI

Sony is training the AI drones for the battlefields of the future from gamer conversations

Not only future drones will get better at killing you, they will also learn to shit talk after doing that

Can't wait to hear "Who you challin lil bro" as I get shot in the ass by a drone.

This is the exact reason why is started with streaming services for games (Gfore/boosteroid/game pass). Next the anti-cheat thing I also spend less waiting for updates. And this way I can still play these games with my buddies.